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Hello my parents updated their laptop with Windows 7 to Windows 10, apparently by mistake. Since they do it themselves, I did not see the terms of conditions nor any information displayed before the upgrade. Since then they get used to the new appearance of windows so I did not do the rollback to windows 7 for them.

Now I start wondering if in the future I will do the disk format and fresh install of windows (which I usually do for them every 3 - 4 years), how will I be able to activate their copy of Windows 10 after fresh installation? Will I be able to use their Win7 key?

Please note that my parents do not have the hotmail account, and I don't want to force them to make one.

Pawel
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1 Answers1

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This has been mentioned on this site at least a 100 times.
Windows 10 has uploaded its key to a Microsoft database, together with some hardware identification.
You re-install Windows 10 WITHOUT a key.
1st time the system connects to the internet again it will check with the Microsoft database which will return the key matching the hardware identification for this system.

This does mean that you will loose the Windows 10 license if you change to much hardware (motherboard replacement). Changing just one component (HD, CPU, video-card) should be OK.

Tonny
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